Twitter launches Birdwatch, a participatory tool against disinformation

On Twitter, US users can now fight fake news on their own.

The social network launched a new tool for the fight against disinformation on Monday, two weeks after banning Donald Trump from his platform, a decision which highlighted his power in terms of regulating freedom of expression.

Birdwatch is intended to allow volunteers in the United States to flag messages and add context notes to them which will be readable only on a separate site initially.

"Our goal is to make these notes visible directly below tweets to the global Twitter audience, when there is consensus among a large and diverse employee base," said Keith Coleman, a vice president of the company, in a press release.

"Context to understand"

According to a preliminary survey conducted by Twitter, "users appreciate that ratings come from the community (rather than Twitter's central authority), and that ratings provide context to help them understand and evaluate a tweet ( rather than focusing on labels like

true

or

false

), ”he added.

The data provided by contributors to Birdwatch will be open to the public, as will the algorithms that make the tool work, says Keith Coleman.

“Our goal is to build Birdwatch transparently, and to have it shaped by the Twitter community,” he explains.

A platform has been set up to allow voluntary contributors (based in the United States) to register and participate in the first phases of its construction, before its launch on Twitter.

Only volunteers who have not recently violated Twitter's rules of use will be admitted.

"If we have more volunteers than places, we will admit accounts randomly, prioritizing those accounts that are more likely to participate because they have been recently active on Twitter, and those that tend to follow and react to tweets other than those of other participants, ”says the platform.

A debate on freedom of expression online

The San Francisco-based company recently took one of the most radical and controversial steps in its history by suspending former US President Donald Trump for inciting violence during the January 6 Capitol riots.

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Last week, Twitter founder and boss Jack Dorsey expressed his concerns on the subject.

He believes the decision was the "right one" but a "failure on our part to promote healthy conversation".

“This sets a precedent that I find dangerous: the power that an individual or business has over part of the global public conversation,” he admitted in an introspective monologue.

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The network was the main communication tool of the outgoing Republican President, who used it on a daily basis to directly reach his 88 million subscribers.

The former president has also been suspended from Facebook, Snapchat and Twitch, among others, sparking indignant reactions from heads of state or NGOs worried about the power accumulated by social networks on freedom of expression.

“We know that building a community-based system like this is going to pose many challenges - it has to be resistant to attempts at manipulation so that it is not dominated by a simple majority of contributors or contributors. prejudices, ”Keith Coleman said.